I am at my wits end with SIL

[WayHarshTai]

I just do not know how to deal with this.

I have known her for seven years, and our relationship has been very odd. She's behaved really nastily to me at times, but always subtle or seemingly innocuous enough that I've never felt able to call her on it.

Some examples. When we moved from a flat to a house we invited them for Christmas, she made a huge deal in the run up of how she may not be able to come with her then 6mo DS as it would break his routine. On the day BIL (DH;s brother) came with their DS and she stayed at home. BIL later told DH that it was because she was jealous of our house (they still lived in a flat and later bought a house twice the size of ours).

I had a 30th birthday party with a vague James Bond theme, cocktails and stuff. She is usually very well groomed, full makeup every day kind of thing. She came to my party in a tracksuit with unwashed hair and wearing a hat. Completely different to how she usually dresses, amd totally at odds with the type of party (I was not remotely partyzilla about it by the way and have never mentioned it)

Then there was all the oddness around our wedding. And i've just found out that the reason BIL (her DH) didn't do a Best Man speech despite weeks of him planning it, asking us for anecdotes and getting book on speeches out of the library was because she told him on the day that DH had asked him not to do one. So he literally thanked the bridesmaids, SIL shouted across the room that he'd forgotten one (he hadn't) and that was his speech.

There is more, but it's all very petty and made me feel like I was going mad for years as she was always so pleasant to my face.

Anyway, these days we get on really well, although we've never really spoken about all this. But she;s gone into massive overdrive with the friendship and it's exhausting and embarrassing.

I enjoy spending time with her but I've had to cut it right back (I was seeingher once a week) because every single time I see her she buys stuff for me and the DC.

Last week I met her in town and she had bought and outfit for each of my three children. She then took DS2 off while I was in a shop and came back with a book each, marked at £5 each but she made a big deal of saying they weren't the marked price. She then went into Next and bought me a top.

She is a SAHM, and I know their finances are not up to this. We earn twice their wage and have a smaller mortgage, for example.

I have TRIED saying no thankyou, but she gets really quite forceful, and gets quite upset.

We had a party yesterday at home and she spent the entire time cleaning and clearing and washing up, despite my DH being quite assertive about it. She was drunk and ended up smashing two glasses in her cleaning frenzy.

She comes round and does things like weeds the garden, or goes upstairs to see the kids and tidies their rooms.

I feel really suffocated by her, and although I'm glad our relationship is friendly now, I can't deal with it.

I have literally no idea how to handle this. I don't want her to go back to hating me because that was awful, but this level of 'help' is exhausting me.

I've asked DH to talk to his brother but they aren't the most involved of families and he doens't want to interfere .

Sorry it's such an essay but I really am at my wits end.

It sounds as if she has a really hard time understanding personal boundaries. I think you have to be the bigger person here and find ways of not hurting her feelings but nevertheless stopping her from invading your privacy.

I think it sounds as though she has been very jealous of you over the years and is maybe now trying to over compensate as she feels bad?

Sounds as though she is trying to hard to please, the cleaning, the constant buying of things for you, the weeding etc. I'm wondering whether the jealousy part started of with her thinking you are better than she is, bigger house, more money etc etc so she is trying to over compensate to match up the this ideal she has dreamed up in her head.

I would see her less often and see if it makes a difference.

How can I do that, though?

I've tried refusing gifts and she just finds ways around it, her DH will present my Dh with a bag of stuff that is 'hand me downs' for example (it will all be brand new).

DH's other brother has been with his GF for six months and it was her birthday recently, we gave her a candle and SIL gave her a bag FULL of candles, ornaments, nick nacks and gifts, at least fifty quids worth, probably more, totally over the top and inappropriate for someone she barely knows. BIL's GF was mortified and didn't know what to do with herself.

So it's not just with me.

She put money in my purse yesterday 'towards DS1's birthday present', but she's already bought him armfuls of stuff for it.

Short of shrieking at her that I don't fucking want it, I don't know what else to do. NOthing works.

I agree she sounds very jealous. Inside her head is some monologue comparing your house to hers, weighing up things and feeling bad. Now she is somehow trying to impress you buying stuff. Could you maybe have a quiet chat about how much you value her friendship and how her company and time for the cousins together is all you need not gifts? She may just feel insecure and a bit of appreciation will relax her. Or she is just weird!!

I think she's unhappy. I used to be like this when I was married. I was desperately unhappy ad my ex-husbands family were always looking down their noses at me. So I'd obsess about the perfect present so they couldn't sneer.

Not that I'm suggesting for a second that you sneer - but maybe she finds the relationship difficult so she is trying to be perfect. So it is perfect.

Now, I don't have to see them and I don't care. Presents are cheap and cheerful.

The thing is, my house is a tip most of the time and my garden is too. We are pretty relaxed and have three kids, so our house is 'lived in'.

Her house and garden are utterly spotless and beautiful. Her DS is at school and she spends her days cleaning and gardening.

So it's quite embarrassing when she cleans and tidies our place because it feels very much as though she's judging us and finding us lacking. So I don't know where the jealousy comes from, although I do see that that's what it is.

It sounds a bit bizarre, like she has a problem with spending money but thinks if she is buying for other people, rather than spending it on herself, it's ok to spend it. You could either take the cleaning/ weeding as helpful or she thinks its not been done right by you.
TBH she doesn't sound very well to me.

She really has nothing to be jealous of, she has the bigger nicer house, chooses not to work, materially speaking her life is very full compared to ours.

She is (imo) very depressed but refuses to seek treatment. Her latest 'thing' is that she's having the menopause (she is perimenopausal) which she uses as a reason for her odder behaviours. But she has always ben the same, I can't see that her menopause is realy to blame.

I swing between wanting to help her and be a friend to her and just wanting to run screaming from the whole shebang.

Wen I was like that (ish) I was suffering with crippling anxiety. But I didn't recognise it.

Oh Spotty, yes. Anxiety is a huge problem for her.

What would have helped you, if you dont' mind me asking?

In my case, WayHarshTai, it was linked to being in an emotionally abusive marriage. Getting out of the marriage and away from the toxics cured me

I would have been ill at the thought of buying my in-laws a present. It would have taken over my whole life. I would have been unable to sleep. Would have felt sick.

Now, it was his family, he should have bought the present, but it was seen as my job.

It was all to do with if I made it look and seem perfect it would be perfect.

I do wonder if I'm not doing her any favours by being nice about it.

She really struggles socially, the other school mums have, to be fair, been utter bitches to her (she organised a night out with them which ended up being me and her sitting in a pub, when we left we walked past a restaurant and they were ALL in there having a meal ). I'd love to be able to say to her, look, the way you are is really offputting and that's why you don't have friends, but how could I say that? Because she is really REALLY full on with everyone, not just me.

She needs to sort the underlying problem. And that's within her. Not you or the other school mums.

I feel sorry for her.

Me too, which is why I work so hard to be friends with her depite how difficult it is and then vent on MN when it gets a bit much.

I wish I could help her. But I am getting to a point where I will need to have some space from her, I had to when her DS was about 6mo as seeing her was making me depressed, I mean really self harm-y depressed. She was obviously struggling really badly but it was all of her own making and she wouldn't be helped. And when she smacked him for being naughty (spitting out the puree she was force feeding him) I walked out and cried and didn't see her for six months.

[Sad]

If she's anything like I was, she will feel like she has to prove herself all the time over everything.

I said on another thread - i think it was deleted -one of my "things" was Denby regency green. I had a complete 12 piece dinner service with 12 of every plate bowl side plate rice bowl - ANd two of everything else. Two teapots. Two serving dishes.

And my house was immaculate. All the time.

I'm to like that anymore [grun]

I can't do smilies.

She sounds like she is unwell to me. Her behaviour sounds manic or hypomanic: could she maybe be bipolar?

Thanks Spotty.

You really sound very similar to her, her thing is candles and nick nacks and garden ornaments, it's like a obsession. Her house is beautiful but full to the brim of trinkets.

I'm so happy to hear that life is better for you now.

She comes out with the maddest things that I just have no idea how to react to. Like yesterday, one of our mutual friends and I were discussing work (I'm actully going to work outside the home for the first time in six years next week) and she said, oh yes, I'll never work because I have a son, unless I can find a job that's school hours and term time only. And we said, there's always childcare, and she said, no, DS wouldn't like that, he's not the sort of child that could go to a childminder.

But then in the next breath she was talking about how she wishes she had a job as she misses working.

And there's just no sane way to react to that. Because she's talking shit, and also being quite subtly insulting about my choice to work, but at the same time being openly jealous about the fact I've got a new job.

Talking to her is exhausting.

How old is her DS?

Is she happily married? I don't just mean to her DH, but is the rest of the family ok with her? What's her own family dynamic?

Bipolar is a possibility. I think she has a severe anxiety disorder.

I don't want to start internet diagnosing her though because she won't seek proper help. Funnily enough she knows she a bit mad, but she's always got some reason why, liek at the moment it's the 'early menopause' (to which I just want to scream YOU'RE 44 AND PERIMENOPAUSAL, IT'S NOT EARLY OR OUT OF THE ORDINARY). And last year it was PCOS which was never actually diagnosed, and before that it was a lack of iron in her diet, and so on and so on.

She sounds ill to me :(

My ex SIL would have put me down over me working. And then said she wanted a wee job that was term time only. But I couldn't ever win with them. If I was working I was career obsessed. If I was at home I was lazy.

Plus, my ex isolated me from all my friends bar one (waves at friend - she introduced me to here) so I had no one to compare,them to. Plus we socialised almost exclusively with them. So it was overwhelming. I never, for example, ever ever got a Christmas Day with my family. It was always with his. Never never had one just us on our own. Always his. To the point of him using ea for hours yelling at me to get me to agree to go there. Or him phoning behind my back. And backing me into a corner where I had to go

Her DS is nearly 6.

Her DH is quite hard work, I think, he's very different to my DH anyway. Her family dynamic is odd, she is an only child and her parents are VERY tricky, her mum threatens suicide when things don't go her way.

MIL and FIl are great but can't do anything right in her eyes, they are either too involved or not involved enough, and she fell out with them when she had her DS and they didn't clear out their spare room (PIL's spare room in PIL's house, to be clear) to make a nursery for him, she genuinely thought this was an awful slight.

I remember my lovely friend getting very frustrated with me in Debenhams one day as I tried to replace a broken mug because I only had 11 AND buy an unfit for one of his cousins wedding.

I was in a meltdown of anxious.